We sold our house!!

I am excited to report that we accepted an offer on our house on Wednesday!  We are both relieved that the house has sold and we’re moving forward. The inspection is next Thursday, which I’m sure we’ll get through. It just worries me that they will find something major that will need to be fixed.  Our home in Texas passed its inspection last week and there were some minor things that were brought to our attention.  We did ask that they have a HVAC inspection and patch some spots on the roof that had been damaged by hail (which is very common in Texas). They said that was fine and would have those things fixed by the time we move in.  Right now, the plan is that David will close on the home on July 24 or 25 and will fly back to Evansville to pack up our house. We should have the closing for our home on July 26 or 27. Once that’s finished we’ll be permanently headed to Texas!! 

No news on the adoption front, other than that wait times have gone up. Our fundraiser with Clever Container is still going on for another week. If you would like to take a look at what they have to offer you can go to: http://www.clevercontainer.com/amypayne  If you’ve ever been to the Container Store, this company sells things that are very similar.  We’ve also have the PayPal donation button on our blog as well.  Thank you to those who have placed an order and those who have donated! We are truly blessed and thankful for your willingness to help us!

Enjoy your weekend and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

Amanda

Week 1 update!

Today marks 1 week and 1 day since Amanda went back to Indiana. So far it's been a pretty good week of work. We had a Veterans Orientation on Monday, a 2-day professional development retreat for staff on Wednesday and Thursday, and a transfer student orientation session on Friday. Needless to say it was a very busy week. The biggest transition so far is going back to a school where orientation is much more thorough than it was at USI. It has been really refreshing and rejuvenating to return to doing orientation the way I remember doing it early in my career. I'm really looking forward to doing a 2-day freshman session again! The first one starts tomorrow! It has also been nice to see the school spirit here. Everywhere I go, students and staff are wearing UTA apparel. When you come to orientation, check-in is packed with UTA welcome banners and a huge statue of the UTA logo that many orientation participants photograph themselves standing next to. UTA "swag" is seriously everywhere you look. It's amazing, and reminds me a lot of my days back at Tennessee and FSU. Living on campus again has not been quite as enjoyable, though. Don't get me wrong...I'm thankful that the university is providing me with temporary housing, but I forgot how noisy students can be. There's also some parking lot lighting that shines into my apartment like a light used in old school interrogations. A blackout curtain has helped, though. Needless to say, I'll be really excited to move into our new house in late-July. Speaking of the house, our offer has been accepted and the inspection came back pretty positively! We will be moving in the last weekend in July. All-in-all, the first week has gone well, but I really miss Amanda and the dogs. I get a chance to visit them the week of July 4th, so I'm really excited about that. In the meantime, I'll keep busy with learning the new job and watching Big Bang Theory reruns on TBS. Oh, and going to my second Rangers game this Wednesday! Hopefully they play better this time around.

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We're excited to report that our offer was accepted for a house in Texas. We will be living in a town south of Arlington called Mansfield. We aren't closing until the end of July and still have our fingers crossed that our house will sell soon. The family that looked at it twice last week decided to go with another home, but we had another showing on Sunday and another one scheduled for tomorrow morning. We've had quite a few people look at it and hope the right buyers come along soon.

In the mean time, we have started an adoption fundraiser. With adoption costs well over $30K we need all the help we can get. We've done a good job budgeting and saving for this adoption. However, with the relocation we've encountered some unexpected expenses that have caused us to dip into our adoption fund. We will have to have our home study redone as well as some additional documents, which of course means more money.

We are so thankful for our friend and neighbor, Amy Payne, who has graciously offerred to host a fundraiser through direct sales company, Clever Container. I chose this company for a fundraiser because they sell items that are useful and practical! A portion of every sale will be donated to our fund from Clever Container and Amy is generously donating a portion of her profits as well. You can access a catalog online at http://www.clevercontainer.com/amypayne  Orders can be emailed/texted to me. If you live out of town you can place an order online; just make sure you choose Duvall Party when you're shopping.  Online orders will ship directly to the you, otherwise they will be shipped to me and I will deliver everything. For those who would like to contribute monetarily, I've added a "Donate" button to our blog.

Please don't feel obligated in anyway to donate or purchase something. Many of you have asked how you can help and this is one way that will help us out tremendously.  We still are waiting to be matched with a baby boy and that call could come any day now, but until then we are faithfully waiting. Things are slowing down in terms of children being matched with families. The main reason for the slow down is that the Korean government is trying to catch up with the back log of cases that have resulted in the long wait times between being matched and final travel. When we started the process there were 18+ months of wait time to travel to bring our child home. They are currently down to 15-18 months and I hope they continue to decrease. Waiting up front is easier then waiting to travel - it's so hard to see your child's picture and wait over a year to bring him home!

Thank you for your support and we'll continue to keep you all updated!
David & Amanda

Headed back to Evansville

Well, it's been a whirlwind trip in DFW area or the metroplex as it's commonly referred to here in Texas.  We have spent most of the week looking at houses although we did get to go to a Rangers game one evening. On a side note, the "All-You-Can-Eat-Seats" are not all they're cracked up to be. The food was terrible (bottom of the barrel fare) and on top of that the game was bad. We left at the 7th inning and the Rangers lost 21-8. Our first game was less than memorable. Luckily there will be more to come.  We also got to experience the Studio Movie Grill where you get to go to the movies and order dinner too.  We saw Snow White and the Huntsman, which wasn't bad and the food was pretty good too.

So, back to the houses. We looked at, at least 17 houses and ultimately chose one in the Mansfield area, which has the best school districts currently in the metroplex. We made an offer yesterday and hope to hear something soon. The house doesn't have a pool, but the subdivision is small and has a community pool/playground area that is really nice. It's like having your own pool, but not having to deal with the upkeep.    The home is 4 bedroom and 2 bath with a nice sized fenced in backyard (which is hard to find). It's a little over 2200 square feet and with plenty of room for guests!!! It's also a straight shot to the University, making it easy for David to get to and from work. Traffic is not fun so it's good that it will be easy for him to get from one place to the other.

Our house was shown to the same family twice while we've been away. Right now our house in Newburgh is in the top two choices for one family. They are still trying to decide which house they like better, ours or another one in the area. Hopefully, they will choose ours!

Amanda is headed back to Evansville this afternoon. It's great that our little Evansville airport has two direct flights each day from Dallas. David's first day of work is Monday, which happens to be an orientation day. Please keep him in your prayers as he starts this new job and is on his own for a few months before Amanda moves down at the end of July.

We'll keep you updated on the housing situation...
David & Amanda